


Tutorial

by marauder_in_warblerland



Category: Glee
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - College/University, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-12
Updated: 2014-05-12
Packaged: 2018-01-19 01:46:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1450795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marauder_in_warblerland/pseuds/marauder_in_warblerland
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Writing Center has always been Kurt’s haven from the chaos on campus, that is, until a restless theater student brings the world crashing in one appointment at a time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Kurt takes a deep breath as he walks into the open lab.

It’s 9:15 AM, just forty-five minutes before the first appointments of the day, but the center is deserted. Even the undergrad receptionists and their chipper “Welcome to the Writing Center! How can I help you?” won’t arrive for another fifteen minutes. Honestly, Kurt doesn’t have any reason to be at work yet. He could linger in his office or in the library coffee shop just as easily, but he can’t help it.

It’s so . . . quiet. This moment before everyone else comes in has always been his favorite time of day. Not that he doesn’t love the Writing Center filled to the brim with chatter and laughter, but there’s something special about being the first person to break the silence on a Monday morning.

When he comes in to refill the scratch paper and flick on the lights, the office feels like a creature all its own, like a Writing Center cat shaking off the nighttime and stretching its way into the morning. The little cubicle clocks and the ancient computers whir back to life and, for just a moment, he can just drink his coffee and bask in the quiet hum of a room ready to do its job.

The receptionists, Anna, Lydia, Bryan, and that other one with the glasses, are used to him by now. By the time they arrive to check messages and prepare the front desk, he’ll already be there, cleaning off the keyboards or shaking the printer into submission. With a wave, they fall into step, until students start trickling in for the first sessions of the day.

Nathan, the only other tutor at this hour, slips in at five to ten, tossing his coat into the first cubical and nodding at Kurt’s coffee cup. “G’morning, man. You bring enough for the class?”

“Not today,” Kurt laughs. “I’ll start bringing the coffee when you bring the bagels.”

“Einstein’s or Gotham bagels?”

“Please, Gotham,” Kurt snorts. “We aren’t philistines.”

“Speak for yourself.” Nathan’s voice carries over the partitions as he disappears into his cube. They’ll probably talk again later, between appointments, or as Nate runs out the door to meet his wife for lunch, but for now they retreat to their own corners of the sky.

Inside his cubical, Kurt settles into a rolly chair and squints at his schedule for the day. Besides the quiet mornings, he adores the center’s regularity. Each three-hour shift divides neatly into thirty-minute appointments and each season comes with its own predicable rush of anxious students. In November they get the grad school and law school application essays. February is business or nursing school cover letters, and then there are always finals in December and May. Each appointment might be its own adventure, but the structure is truly elegant.

Today’s schedule doesn’t let him down. He has two business school application essay appointments, followed by a series of mid-term papers, projects, and lab reports all filed into perfect 30-minute boxes. He plucks a sharpened pencil from the tin and rolls it between his index finger and his thumb. Rachel might think that he’s insane, but in the midst of an MFA, two crappy ex-boyfriends, and his dad’s chemo, this cubical has been his island of happy predictability.

***************

Two and a half hours into his shift, Kurt wants to take that pencil and shove it into his own eye socket.

His first appointment had held such _promise_. The student, one Benny Kaufman III, was working on his business school application weeks in advance and there were words, _actual words_ written on a page for them to talk about during the appointment. Words were a gift in and of themselves, but then the student read his draft out loud, and Kurt had almost started crying. It turns out Mr. Kaufman wanted to spend the 500 words of his application essay talking about his father’s successful speedboat empire and the “exceeding responsibility” that he’d shown taking care of his prize-winning Akita.

Kurt had been tempted to turn over the table in a fit of class warfare, but that might not have been completely “professional.” So instead, he’d walked his new friend Benny through some of the places where his argument might lack the kind “persuasive evidence” that an admissions committee would appreciate. By the end of the thirty minutes, Benny looked like he was actively passing a gallstone, and the day had only gone downhill from there. It was as though the gods of Writing Center fuckery had actively decided to send their greatest hits in his direction.

  *       Disgruntled undergrad who somehow thought the visit had been required? Check 


  *       Engineering grad student taking out her aggression on her absent advisor? Check


  *       Sophomore with the paper due “in, like, two hours” who wanted someone else to write his thesis. Check, check, checkity check. And checkmate.



By the time he bids adieu to his second-to-last appointment of the day, his brain is about to dribble out of his ears and puddle around his shoes. Why he hadn’t gotten an extra-large coffee on his way into work, he couldn’t imagine. Clearly, past Kurt was an idiot.

“Kurt? Your 1:30 appointment is here.”

At least he can count on the receptionists to be chipper. After dealing with a steady stream of harried students, they still remind him of Vocal Adrenaline in performance mode. Kurt straightens his spine and turns back to the waiting area. He can do this. He has experience, he has a set of reliable tools, and he only has to last for thirty more minutes before he can watch an entire season of the Golden Girls and eat Oreos straight out of the box.

The receptionist (Mel or maybe Callie?) gives a welcoming wave to a student hovering near the doorway and Kurt echoes the gesture out of habit. Usually, he tries to get a read on each new student as they walk in the door, so he knows what he’s in for. A scowl or an anxious twitch say more about how an appointment’s going to go than the student’s actual assignment.

On any other day he’d be gathering data, but right now he can hardly plaster a believable smile on his face, let alone take in what anyone else is doing. Instead of a full picture, he gets snippets: his student has a little bounce in his step as he walks over to Kurt’s corner and when he sticks out his hand for a two solid shakes it’s warm and soft, like Rachel’s hands after a manicure.

“You must be Kurt!” The man smiles, and apparently he’s going to give the perky receptionists a run for their money. Fantastic. At least someone in this appointment is going to be awake.

The student peeks around Kurt’s shoulder towards the desk, eyebrows raised in guileless confusion, and Kurt realizes that he’s missed his cue.

“You can come on back,” he says, stretching his face into a smile and gesturing towards one of the chairs. “What brings you to the Writing Center today?”

“Oh, um. This is my first time, actually.” The man perches on the edge of the chair and starts rooting through his backpack. As he speaks, he skims past what must be a dozen neatly labeled moleskin folios. “I’m working on the cover letter for an internship in California? I’m applying for about a dozen different ones all over the country and they all ask for different requirements--" 

The guy’s cute in an earnest kind of way, like a Mormon missionary on acid. Every little hair on his head is in place and smooth, just like the straight lines down his button-up and the checks on his little bow tie.  It’s a lot of look, but Kurt can admire that in a man. It’s kind of brave, even in the big city, but lord does he wish it wasn’t all so bright. Right now, his mind isn’t in any place for bright pinks or greens, and all of that color makes him feels like he’s being outshone by a blazer.

He peers at the seaming on the sleeves, trying to make out whether the blazer in question is from this year or the last, until he realizes that the guy’s still talking. Or, at least he had been and Kurt has no idea how long he’s been sitting there knowing that his Writing Center tutor isn’t paying him the slightest bit of attention.

The man cocks his head. “Should I, maybe, repeat some of that?” It’s a stellar impersonation of a kindergarten teacher chiding a stupid five-year-old, and Kurt wants to shoot himself on the spot.

“Oh my god, um. . . “ He glances down at his schedule in panic, “BLAINE, Blaine, I am incredibly sorry. I promise you, on behalf of the Writing Center and myself that I’m not usually like this. Usually I am an excellent tutor, but this morning was just, I--”

“Kurt!” Blaine holds up one hand to stop the anxiety spilling out of Kurt’s mouth, and sets the other lightly on Kurt’s knee. “It’s ok. You don’t have to explain. We all have those days when we can’t be the version of ourselves that we like to put on the brochure, right?”

Kurt nods quickly. “Yes. Oh yes, we do.”  

“And I’m sure it was partially my fault for being so boring. Next time, I’ll put my explanation to music, maybe some ragtime—”

Kurt’s about to object that music isn’t necessary, until he finally looks Blaine in the face. This man, who should be righteously pissed off, is grinning, crinkles dancing at the corners of his eyes, and Kurt can’t help but smile back. 

“I’m not going to tell you how to talk about your writing,” Kurt says with nod towards Blaine’s folders, “but a little showmanship wouldn’t hurt, especially if you took a page from _Ragtime: The Musical_ , rather than ragtime the genre.”

Blaine leans back in his chair, his hand finally leaving Kurt’s knee. “Terrence McNally fan?” Kurt shrugs.

“I’ll see what I can do. It might be hard to work the ‘Gettin’ Ready Rag’ into my explanation, but ‘Gliding’ shouldn’t be a problem.”

“Still, you might want to save the full performances for our appointments.”

“To prevent confusion?”

“To prevent confusion.”

As quickly as the flow starts, it stops again, and an awkward silence drops over the cubical. Someone laughs on Nathan’s side of the wall and they flinch in unison.

“So,” Blaine says, just as Kurt clears his throat. Kurt balks, but Blaine ducks his head with a self-conscious smile, and waves for him to go first.

“I suppose,” Kurt starts slowly, “we should probably get to work?” It comes out like a question, and he hates himself for sounding like he’s ten. “Maybe we can salvage what little is left of your appointment. Uh, what if we agree to--”

“— Start over?”

“Yes! Exactly. How about this?” He sits up straight in his rolly chair and sticks out his hand like a car salesman on the job. “Thank you for coming to the Writing Center, Mr. Blaine Anderson. My name is Kurt Hummel and I am absolutely chuffed to see what you’ve brought in today.”

Blaine takes Kurt’s hand and gives it two swift, cartoonish shakes. “Why hello Kurt. I am pleased to meet you for the very first time. I too, am chuffed about our appointment, if not about the project I’m working on.”

“Oh?” Kurt raises an eyebrow and leans forward to look at the leather folder on the table. “Do tell.”

“Well Kurt, I’m finishing my MFA in theater this spring,” Kurt gives a little round of applause in his seat. “Thank you, good sir. I can’t wait to be done, but that also means I have to start applying for internships all over the country. I’m mostly trying for acting and musical theater programs, but a few administrative internships snuck in there too, just to make the process more difficult.”

“Those darn internships. They’re sneaky.”

“You have no idea, or maybe you do,” Blaine smiles. “You obviously know your way around a libretto.”

Kurt shrugs happily as if to say, “Why yes, yes I do.”

“I would love some help figuring out what to say in these cover letters, so I don’t just sound like a pathetic beggar person who doesn’t have anything to offer a reputable theater company.”

“I daresay, Blaine Anderson, that you’ve come to the right place.”

“The right place, or the _write place_?”

“Oh be quiet and show me your draft before I hand you over to another tutor.”

After that, the time flies by in a rush of brainstorming and loopy energy. When Kurt suggests bridging two unrelated sections with a personal story, Blaine bounces back with one suggestion and then another, until he’s literally bouncing in his chair. Kurt knows how he feels. Twenty minutes. That’s all they have after Kurt’s fiasco of an introduction and that’s all it takes for a new cover letter draft to materialize before their eyes, like an incantation in Blaine’s neat, careful handwriting.

As the clock inches towards 1:30, Blaine leans back and lets out a long breath, eyes wide in awe at his paper on the table. “Kurt! I know it sounds cliché, but I feel so much better. I could never have written anything that _pretty_ on my own.”

Kurt leans his head on one hand and smiles across the table. “That was all you. I wish I could say that every student leaves my appointments with beautiful new prose, but I’m not that good.”

“I’m sure you say that to all of your students,” Blaine teases.

“That I’m not the best writing tutor on campus? No, I really don’t.”

“I guess we’re just good together.”

Kurt tries to hum in agreement, but it comes out as more of an embarrassed squeak. _Good together, my ass_ , he wants to say. _Your perky generosity saved my delinquent behind from ignoring students, which could have been a reportable offense._ Instead, he rearranges the pencils and pens in the little tin at the front of their shared desk.

Blaine clears his throat in the silence and Kurt waits for him to correct his mistake. _Oh wait,_ he’ll say. _I’m actually awesome for not reporting you to your superiors._ And then Kurt will feel the appropriate amount of shame.

“Feel free to say no, but could I work with you again?” Blaine asks, and Kurt almost laughs out loud in surprise.

“It’s just that I enjoyed meeting you—twice—I have to put together most of the written portion of my thesis this semester and I don’t have the first clue of how I’m going to finish this thing.”

“Well Blaine,” Kurt fights through the quick flush of pride—he will stay professional, even if he pulls something in the process—“it just so happens that we have an ‘ongoing student’ option. We can meet every week at the same time, and you can even send me drafts between meetings, if you like.”

Kurt realizes, with an embarrassed jolt, that he’s never felt this giddy or this seedy giving his personal email to a student. Luckily, Blaine doesn’t seem to notice.

“If that’s ok with you! Thank you, Kurt! That would be . . . perfect.” Blaine almost face plants into the table diving for his backpack. “Let’s, y’know— let me get a notebook.”

So, when Blaine produces what must be moleskin number 32 out of 50, Kurt writes down his email address and shyly slides the page back into Blaine’s hands. He tries to not watch too carefully as Blaine leaves the cubical and stops by the receptionist’s desk on the way out the door. Not every student who asks about an ongoing appointment comes back. Blaine wouldn’t be the first undergrad or grad to get excited about the possibility of having someone crack the metaphorical whip, only to disappear into the ether. Kurt doesn’t take it personally. People have lives and lives are complicated things, but this time he can’t help but watch as Blaine makes his follow-up appointments and slips away.

He stays in his corner of the office for a little longer than necessary, gathering his things and feeling the adrenaline of a good session sink into his veins. For a long minute, he stares at the wall and wonders why the cubical feels emptier than when he’d arrived that morning.

Back home in his apartment, Kurt sinks into the reliability of routine. Leftovers get heated, the cat gets fed, and e-mails get read. Hours later though, when the cat’s long since given up on him, his computer screen will still glow with the same email it’s displayed since Kurt first arrived home from work. For some reason, he can’t bring himself to close the three-sentence message with the long, winding attachment, and the salutation that reads “Yours in prose, Ragtime.”


	2. Chapter 2

Kurt knows the exact moment he realizes he is incredibly screwed.

Blaine had been coming in for five weeks. That’s five meetings, five emails, and five opportunities to start getting the wrong idea about their “relationship.” It would help if Blaine’s appointments felt like meetings, but they don’t. For his second appointment, Blaine showed up with 42 pages of typed notes and a hand-drawn story map and, ever since then, they’ve felt more like _dancing_.

Sometimes the appointment’s more of a waltz and other times—the best times— it’s more like swing, but either way it feels like Blaine knows what he’s thinking before the words have time to form in Kurt’s mouth.

He should have known something was off after Blaine brought in his lit review. It was painfully rough, and Blaine looked about this close to turning it into confetti and tossing it over the cubical walls.

“This is it,” Kurt thought. “The honeymoon’s over.” But then he walked Blaine through a painfully ordinary reverse outline, and their—whatever it was—all fell back into place. Kurt gave an example on the first paragraph, they talked it through together on the second, and by the third he couldn’t tell who was supposed to be leading anymore.

Even when they disagreed, it was somehow creepily in sync. That much was obvious. During his fourth appointment, Blaine wanted to “pump up” his introduction with a personal story, while Kurt thought it could use some “careful distance.” With any other appointment, Kurt would have stopped pushing at the first sign of resistance. After all, it’s not his paper and it’s not his grade. But, it wasn’t any other appointment. It was a tango, so Kurt pushed back.

By the end, his boss could have heard them screaming from across the hall. There they were, in the middle of the office, with Blaine leaning into a diatribe on the “devaluation of the humanities in an age of scientific ideation” and Kurt wielding the rough draft like a baton. It was carnage left, right and center, and yet, by the time Blaine’s half hour ended, they’d somehow created a new document. His introduction somehow ended up with a clear structure and the grace notes of Blaine’s experience to hold it all together. Honestly, Kurt can’t remember how they got there. He must have blacked out somewhere after calling his own _student_ a “stubborn sonofabitch.”

They’d gotten odd looks that time, particularly when Blaine leaned in for a —completely platonic—hug on the way out the door. Still, nothing set off Kurt’s alarm bells until meeting number five. That was when they’d taken on the herculean task of organizing Blaine’s notes for his final analysis.

It wasn’t that Blaine didn’t have ideas, quite the opposite actually. He couldn’t stop coming up with new ideas and he certainly couldn’t get any of the ideas that already existed to sit down and stay still. Twenty minutes into their appointment, Kurt asked about his “grand vision for the project,” and Blaine shot off like a bullet, eyes shining and arms waving in the shape of his ideal argument.

“I know there isn’t space right now,” he’d said, in Kurt’s general direction, “but can you imagine an entire section on the translation of the performance from the stage to the audience, and then through the cognitive process of engaging with storytelling? I could bring in cognitive science and incorporate about the ways that activist, meaning-driven theater impacts audiences in specific spaces. Does Brecht have to be performed in the black box to resonate with a contemporary audience? Is Opera doomed from the start? I don’t know! Someone must have already studied that—”

Kurt watched as Blaine lost himself in his reverie and in that moment he wanted to kiss him. God, he wanted to push forward off of his chair and kiss those open, passionate lips more than anything he had ever wanted in his life.

The moment passed.

Kurt glanced at the clock. Blaine took the hint, and they’d gone on with the actual draft, but it turns out that wanting to kiss Blaine Anderson wasn’t a sensation that went without a fight. In fact, it didn’t go at all. Blaine left the Writing Center and it was still there. Lingering. Kurt didn’t allow himself to become a horny mess—Hummel men are not slaves to their hormones—but the desire sat there, like a tug on the back of his neck. It made itself at home, and popped out at unexpected moments, like when his boss sucked on her pencil or while he made macaroni for dinner. Macaroni is not supposed to be sexy. 

He wants to kiss Blaine. He wants to grab that boy’s beautiful, animated face and kiss him until neither of them can think straight. The logical part of his brain gets the appeal. Blaine’s attractive, smart, and deeply invested in everything he’s ever done. He has the mind of a museum docent with the passions of a six-year-old who just learned about dinosaurs. Just the thought of all of that energy concentrated on parts of his own body is enough to make even the smarter bits of Kurt’s anatomy cry for mercy. If he let himself imagine the details—

But no. He doesn’t go there, not even at 2 AM, when he can’t seem to convince his body to go to sleep. He has other things to think about, real things, and this ideal version of Blaine? That isn’t real. To start, Blaine’s leaving. Each little victory in an appointment is one step closer to the end of Blaine’s MFA career and the start of a bright new internship somewhere on the other side of the country. So, he doesn’t let himself fill in the details.

Until one day, he does.

***************** 

His shift starts out eerily normal. There’s the buzz of Blaine Anderson in the back of his mind, but over the last few days his _wanttakehave_ craving has turned into background noise, like the steady chatter in the next cubical. Irritating, to be sure, but also oddly comforting.

It’s a Tuesday, so he doesn’t have to worry about seeing Blaine in the flesh and he can look forward to hours of distraction from anxious students. That is, until one student cancels, and then another, until he’s looking forward to a yawning ninety-minute gap before his next scheduled appointment. Kurt’s become a pro at spacing out when he should be updating his student records, but even he can’t spend ninety minutes spinning in the rolly chairs.

He digs though his backpack for his battered copy of _Bird By Bird_. He doesn’t quite have it memorized, but he’s close and it’s a bad sign when Anne Lamott can’t keep him tethered to the page. By the end of the first sentence, the words blur together and all he can see are eyes, lips, and hands—soft hands—the kind that moisturize and draw sharp lines in shapeless space. He imagines stopping those anxious hands with a touch, running one finger up the length from wrist to arm, and up to Blaine’s stunned face. He’s stupefied, shocked into silence as Kurt caresses the soft skin along his jawline and allows his eyes to slip down to Blaine’s lips.

“May I? Please?” He whispers.

Blaine’s eyes widen and he nods in a sudden jerk, like his body has gone off on its own. “Yes,” he nods, “yes,” and Kurt leans forward to taste.

Blaine’s mouth opens as they touch, sucking in a rough breath and pulling Kurt in hard. He can’t tell whose tongue pushes in first or who stands, pulling them both out of their chairs, until he can feel Blaine’s chest rising in uneven waves. Blaine snakes an arm around Kurt’s back, and before he can think, Kurt’s pushing him back against the only real wall in the room.

One of Kurt’s hands slips behind Blaine’s neck while the other skims down Blaine’s side to meet his hipbone where it juts out over the band of his soft pants. Kurt rubs circles into the exposed skin, allowing his thumb to dip just below the fabric, and lingering there when Blaine groans into his mouth, inarticulate and raw.

“Don’t—don’t you—god don’t stop.”

Blaine’s legs inch apart with each open kiss, until Kurt feels everything at once, from Blaine’s soft, whining lips to the hard weight pressed against his upper thigh. Kurt slides his hand all the way down until Blaine’s hips are stuttering up into the heel of Kurt’s palm. Blaine head falls back against the wall, mouth open in a silent moan at the ceiling. It’s all happening so fast, and Kurt can feel himself throbbing in his pants. He wishes he could just drop to his knees and—

“Oh my god, that’s disgusting!”

Kurt jolts out of his chair and falls backwards into the barrier on the other side of the cubical before he realizes that the voice in the reception area isn’t talking to him. He’s still alone, clothing where it belongs and pulse higher than it has any right to be at work. He shudders, shaking off the feel of feather-light hair under his fingertips, and flattens his shirt with one hand. This is why students are not allowed to cancel their appointments at the last minute. He clearly isn’t capable of managing his own mind for more than five minutes at a time.

“Are you sure it was a student?” The same voice drifts over the wall, only now he can hear the receptionist laughing back.

“Of course, I don’t know how you haven’t heard already. My lit section practically talked about it in class.” Kurt knows that eavesdropping is unforgivable, but if it’s that or making the world’s only solo Writing Center porn, he’ll take the faux pas.

The receptionist goes on. “According to my TA, her officemate started dating one of his students, and it was the same student that another TA was trying to hook up with last summer. So now, the two TAs are fighting over this senior and—seriously— their advisors just found out about the whole thing.”

“Oh shit.” The other voice sounds about as shocked as Kurt feels.

“Right? I mean, I know Medievalists can’t keep it in their pants, but that’s just gross.”

Kurt wants to laugh at the receptionist’s scandalized whisper, but suddenly none of it is even a little bit funny. He doesn’t live under a rock. He’d heard about the lit TAs and their bizarre lover’s tiff last week, but he hadn’t put the pieces together. If any part of his incredibly hot fantasy made its way into reality, those same students would be talking about him and—god forbid—about Blaine. It wouldn’t matter how quiet they were or how professional, someone would find out, and he wouldn’t be able to make it stop. 

He lands back in his chair with a solid thunk and drops his head between his knees, in an effort to keep the world from spinning. Blaine isn’t an undergrad, not by a long shot, but he is Kurt’s student. Once a week, every week, Kurt is responsible for teaching Blaine how to become a better writer, not how to become a better boyfriend for his sexually stunted Writing Center tutor. He can only imagine what his boss would think if she knew that he was entertaining ungentlemanly thoughts toward students under his control. She’d blow a gasket, and this is the most levelheaded human being Kurt has ever met. 

He can’t summon the energy to imagine his advisor’s reaction. He’s going to be on the job market next year, and she could flat out refuse to write a recommendation. It would be within her rights. Hell, he’d probably do the same thing if he found out one of his advisees was taking advantage of her authority.

Kurt bites his lip and forces his eyes up at the ceiling. He won’t cry. Kurt Hummel will not cry about a boy at work, because he isn’t losing anything. He doesn’t have anything to lose. In five minutes, he will get ready for his next appointment and he will be a professional. He slips his phone out of his pocket and pulls up a number, giving it a long look before typing out a text. After work, he knows what he has to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to foramomentonly, gluttonouspenguin, and amongsoulsandshadows for your editing help and your constant support.


	3. Chapter 3

“This could be a gift in disguise, Kurt! Just think about the plots that you could develop out of an ill-fated romance. The teacher-student element alone—”

Rachel leans over her iced tea in her excitement and rocks the rickety coffee shop table on its uneven legs. Kurt grabs his mocha before it can end up in his lap, and shoots a glance at the mostly empty tables. This isn’t much more than what either of them has already done in Coffee Bytes, but getting kicked out would really be the cherry on top of an already miserable Sunday. Even Rachel and Elliott’s rapid-fire responses to his SOS text last night couldn’t salvage his emotional funk.

“I hope you aren’t going to suggest that I go make a music video with three of my most recent boyfriends, because right now we’re talking about actual promiscuity.” Kurt rolls his eyes across the table at Elliott, who responds with a confused eyebrow raise.

“I think I might have missed something—"

Kurt waves him back to his Arnold Palmer. “It’s not important. I’ll tell you later over something stronger. Do you remember when I told you about Jessie?”

“Oh god.”

“Exactly. So can we get back to the part where I’m risking my entire career for the plot of my next play?”

Rachel huffs and pokes at the remaining ice cubes with her straw. “That’s not what I’m suggesting. Of course you can’t continue seeing him in the Writing Center, but the heartache of your separation could absolutely fuel your artistic creation.”

“Who said anything about heartache?”

“It was all implied, Kurt,” Rachel says, patting him on his available hand. “I’m very good at reading emotional depth.”

Not to interrupt,” Elliott shakes his drink in the air, as if to hail Rachel like a passing cab, “but why can’t he just ask this guy on a date? Rachel, I’m with you on the artistic inspiration, because that’s a play I would pay to see, but where’s the rush? He sounds like a smart dude and cute. He is cute, isn’t he?”

Kurt has to physically stop himself from nodding like a bobble head doll. He’s the cutest, but they’re both completely missing the point of this conversation. “First of all,” he says to Rachel, ignoring Elliott’s question, “I can’t just kick Blaine out of the Writing Center or pass him off to some other tutor like leftover pizza. I am not going to make him go see someone else for a month, when I already know his entire project, just because a few idiotic English majors are going to talk about something that will never happen.” Rachel opens her mouth to jump in, until he turns and rounds on Elliott. “Second, I can’t just ask him out like he’s some Joe Normal on the street. I’m his teacher!”

“His tutor.”

“Same thing, at least to everyone that matters.”

“Exactly,” Rachel smiles. “And you are too talented to risk a scandal of this magnitude. You don’t want to turn out like that linguistics grad who got caught selling Adderall in the honors dorm.” Her voice drops to a stage whisper. “I think she finally got a job teaching sex-ed in prisons.”

Elliot blinks. “That’s not the same thing at all.”

“No it isn’t.” Kurt presses the heel of his hand against his temple and sighs, “Because she probably wanted to sell drugs to minors, whereas I do not want to date my students.”

Rachel shoots a glance at Elliott, who is suddenly fascinated by the bottom of his glass.

“I don’t!” He smacks his palm against the tabletop and feels like a petulant child. “What do I have to do to make that crystal clear to you? I, Kurt Hummel, do not want to do anything inappropriate or untoward with Blaine Anderson.”

“Of course you do.”

The voice comes from behind his head, and he spins around just in time to see Santana pass behind Rachel’s chair and drop into the last open seat at the table.

“I texted her when you were in the little boy’s room.” Rachel explains, tucking her phone back into her purse. “She’s good at these kinds of things.”

“If by ‘these kinds of things,’ you mean those oh-so-rare times when you are all emotionally constipated toddlers, then yes Berry, I’m your gal.” Santana eyes the table and steals what’s left of Kurt’s mocha. “Speaking of which, Hummel, you absolutely want to nail your wonder boy, but you aren’t going to. Do you know why?”

She cocks her head in Kurt’s direction and smirks around her straw. He wants do to what Quinn would do in his position and smack her right across her smug face, but mostly because she’s made him curious.

Santana sets her elbows on the table and continues. “You’re never going to go on a date with your best boy because you wouldn’t be able to handle being like the rest of us for a change. You spent so much time judging Berry for her adventure with the amazing plastic mannequin last year, and you wouldn’t shut up when I got back together with Brit.”

Kurt gapes across the table _. Since when is having a moral compass such a bad thing? And for god’s sake Elliott, what is so fascinating at the bottom of that glass?_ “What— you—” he sputters. “Rachel was dating a prostitute! Her boyfriend of several months was literally trading his body for money, and you were right there with me. If there was ever a correct time for judgment—”

Elliot jumps out of his seat, muttering something about “another drink” and disappears into the late-afternoon rush at the front counter. Kurt will have to kill him later. No one gets to be besties with Santana Lopez and remain so remarkably good at avoiding conflict.

Rachel hums something that’s probably supposed to sound soothing. “Santana isn’t saying that you’re wrong. In retrospect, my dalliance with Brody was probably misguided. It’s just. . . ” She trails off, studying Kurt’s face like a particularly tricky edit. “When’s the last time you let yourself do something really crazy? And no,” she says when Kurt raises a finger, “the tattoo doesn’t count. That was four years ago and even then we were over eighteen. Getting a tattoo in college is about as rebellious as—”

“— as dancing in the library in high school?” Kurt offers, ruefully.

“There it is!” Santana throws her arms in the air like a touchdown ref and Rachel smiles into her napkin. “You, my friend, are way past due for a real rebellion and one of these days you are going to burst.”

“Burst?”

“That’s right, burst.” Santana puffs out her cheeks and raises her arms slowly, up and up and up, like an expanding balloon. “You’re going to run into an irresistible temptation, maybe working on really long, hard essay,” she drawls as Rachel giggles into her hands. “You’re going to take one look at that sexy, needy man-child—whoever he is—and all of that pent up rebellion is going to come rushing out. Just wait. By the end of that session you’ll be writing manuals on all the kinky shit I bet you love.”

Elliott drops back into his seat at “kinky shit” and looks a lot more interested than when he left.

“Are you done?” Kurt crosses his arms and leans back in his chair.

“I could never exhaust the fount that is Lady Hummel’s kinky shit, but for now, yes I am.”

“Thank you very much,” he says in his best Midwestern passive aggressive drawl. “As much as I hate to say it, I actually have to go to work now, but I have loved everything about this conversation we just had. Elliott, I particularly liked the past where you said nothing at all.”

“I do my best,” Elliott smiles over the edge of his new cup of coffee. “See you later for practice?”

“Of course.” Kurt grabs his coat from the back of the chair and flutters his fingers in their direction. “Ladies, Gentlemen . . . Santana.”

He manages to keep a half-smile on his face almost as far as the parking lot, before it crumples into a worried squint. Work will help, he tells himself. It always does. Even on the no good, very bad days at the office, it’s still infinitely better than stewing in his own dysfunction. Work will help, he mutters under his breath and when hears it out loud, he almost believes it.

****************

As Kurt walks into the already-bustling office, he feels off-kilter, like his center of gravity’s been given a strong twist in the wrong direction.

He swipes a stack of notepaper from the storage shelf and hurries into an open cube without so much as a wave to the receptionists. They don’t notice. Bryan’s too busy taking down cancelations and Candace is dealing with a line of anxious undergrads looking for the workshop on grammar for English Language Learners. He could have flipped them off on their way in the door and they wouldn’t have given him a second glance.

Still, he notices. Today he notices everything: his hands that won’t stop tapping on the table and the way that he can’t seem to find a comfortable place in his chair. If he’s honest with himself, he feels like a ticking time bomb, just waiting to explode all over the office and take out innocent students in his wake.

He knows they hadn’t meant anything by it. Except Santana. She’d meant every word, but even she couldn’t have predicted that Kurt would pay attention. Usually her best lines just flowed off of his back, like water, but something about the image of his imminent explosion has him spooked.

He organizes and reorganizes the materials on this desk, making noise just for the sake of making noise. Usually, as if anything about this day felt usual, he’d have had time to settle his mind and to ease himself in the part of the consummate tutor. After his last break up, he’d faked his enthusiasm for weeks, and no one was the wiser, but Blaine had moved his usual appointment up by two hours, making him and his smiling, distracting — not even slightly tempting— face Kurt’s first appointment of the day.

Kurt wants to tear up the scrap paper into tiny pieces in restless energy, but there’s no time.

“Good afternoon!” Blaine’s cheer carries over the cubical wall, and Kurt settles his face into a mask of calm.

“Afternoon,” he calls back as he rounds the low wall and comes face to face with Blaine’s blinding smile. Blaine’s fingers fiddle with the stapled papers in his hands, and Kurt wants to hold them still.

Kurt can do this. It’s been a long while since he performed in anything other than his own readings, but he assumes he can still play a believable part. “Well, come on back, bud,” he says, beckoning Blaine in with an expansive wave. Kurt realizes that he may have assumed wrong. Apparently his idea of a responsible mentor sounds eerily like his father.

“Right.” Blaine’s smile falters, but then it’s back, like the flicker of a candle. “Are you ready to take on the last analysis?” He flashes jazz hands on the last two words. “I hope you carb-loaded before work today. I’m warning you that this section’s going to be more of a marathon than a sprint.”

“Um.” Kurt blinks, the picture of a stupid fish faced with a lure. All of his usual responses suddenly sound flirty and shameless. “I’m perfectly fine,” he finally says. “I had a sandwich before my shift.”

The joke, if it could be called that, lands with a thud between their bodies, and Blaine just watches the place on the floor where it would have fallen.

“I’m sorry,” Kurt rubs the back of his neck and glances up from the floor to the question in Blaine’s eyes. “I’m really tired. I had a reading this weekend and—”

“Okay.”

“I’m really very sorry.”

“I— I know.” Kurt tries not to linger on the way that Blaine’s fingers bend his papers as he walks past into the cubical. “Maybe we should just get to it,” Blaine continues, dropping into the farthest chair. “Then maybe we can get done early and you can move on to another student. Or take a minute to rest your eyes?”

“That’s a great idea,” Kurt agrees too quickly, and Blaine’s gaze drops back down to his papers. Kurt has the sense that he just failed some kind of test that he hadn’t known was happening. He leans over the papers now spread over the table and grasps at the first, easy topic he can remember from their last session. “So, about the audience response section. . .” Kurt starts, his voice laced with forced levity. Were you able to wind the activism strand into each topic sentence like we talked about? Not that you were in danger of avoiding the issue. Your entire committee is going to run off to become radical Marxists after your thesis defense.”

“Uh huh.”

Kurt looks up from his own pencil and realizes that Blaine isn’t really listening. He’s looking over his new text, reading two paragraphs ahead, like any other student eager to just get on with it. Kurt purses his lips as he realizes that being “any other student” is exactly what he’d silently asked Blaine to be, and that’s what he’d become— instantly and without a second thought.

For the rest of the session, time crawls. They somehow make it through the full hour, but Kurt feels each move of the minute hand like a slow drag. Once, he catches himself tracing the line of Blaine’s upper lip, but then Blaine catches his eye, and Kurt pulls away. After that point, Kurt slowly inches himself away from Blaine’s body, until they’re practically sitting at opposite ends of the little wooden table, divided by pencils, guidebooks, and an ocean of empty air.

“That’s time,” Kurt sighs, and he’s disappointed at the tinge of relief at the edge of his voice. Being a professional has never felt so exhausting.

Blaine mutters a “thank you,” grabs his things and hustles out of Kurt’s cubical, eyes on the floor. Usually, he’d reset his bag in the office while they made small talk about stupid things. Last week, Blaine couldn’t stop talking about Nickelodeon cartoons from when they were little, so Kurt learned than he ever wanted to know about SpongeBob. Today, Blaine rearranges his things in the waiting area, with an air that’s not so much upset as lost, as though everything will make sense if he can just get his bag back in working order.

“Have a good day, Blaine!” The receptionist waves from her desk, holding out a bowl of chocolate kisses. He’s been around a lot.

Blaine perks up, a half smile pulling at the edges of his mouth, and reaches for a handful. “Thank you Candi!” He says, tucking most of his haul into the side pocket of his bag, “Or do you prefer Candace? My aunt had a dog named Candi, so I like to check.”

The receptionist giggles into her palm. “Candi’s fine.”

“Oh good.” He perches on the corner of the desk and starts unwrapping a kiss. “Once, when I was in high school, I told a little girl that she had the same name as my aunt’s dog and she started crying right before her piano recital. So, here I am, trying to give her a hug and she’s inconsolable because she found out that she shares her name with an animal. I felt like a monster.”

Kurt watches as Blaine demonstrates how he knelt down on the ground, holding out his arms to hug a tiny, invisible diva, and his heart sinks into his shoes.

He knows that light in Blaine’s eyes and the way that his hands trace wild shapes in the air as he talks. The receptionist sets her chin in her hands and watches Blaine’s impromptu performance like he’s the most fascinating creature on campus, and Kurt knows that feeling too. He doesn’t know how anyone could listen to Blaine Anderson without falling a little bit in love, and somehow he’d thought that those bright eyes and waving hands were just for him.

He feels like such a monumental idiot. Blaine’s a theater MFA for god’s sake; he’s getting a graduate degree in transformation. He knows how to be what people want, and he must have been able to sense what his stupid, childish tutor had wanted him to become. Then again, even that awful thought could all be a pipe dream.

The only other possibility is that Blaine didn’t do anything at all. He didn’t flirt and he didn’t pretend to be interested, Kurt just made it all up in his head out of wishful thinking and that part of his mind that wanted to do something crazy. Blaine’s clearly just a kind, funny, sociable guy and Kurt filled in the rest with wild fantasies about romance and scandal. He was already writing his next play, and he didn’t even know it.

Kurt forces himself to turn away from the sight of Blaine and Candi bantering about pets and picks up his legal pad filled with notes from their meetings. He has a few minutes before his next appointment, and he can put them to good use. Kurt’s fantasy might have burst in tiny pieces all over his corner of the office, but Blaine will still be back next week. The relationship in Kurt’s mind might have been a farce, but the Blaine on this paper, the Blaine in six weeks of comments and critique, is real. Deep under the humiliation, Kurt knows he is a fantastic tutor and, for now, as he skims his careful handwriting, that will have to be enough.


	4. Chapter 4

And then Blaine disappears.

There’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for how they manage to go three and then four weeks without an appointment— several, in fact— and none of them have anything to do with Kurt’s moral confusion. First there’s spring break, which Kurt swears came out of nowhere. After break, Kurt misses a few workdays with a persistent cough. He finally forces himself back into the Writing Center with enough Dayquil to kill farm animals only to hear that Blaine’s already canceled his last two appointments.

“Sick,” the receptionist says, like she’s checking off a box, so Kurt moves on. He talks to other students (“What’s a citation style?” “Why’s my teacher being such a bitch?”) and tries not to check his email between appointments.

Blaine’s sick, just like he said, and Kurt doesn’t have any reason to give it a second thought, but he does anyway.

The next week it only gets worse. He shouldn’t have time to think about anything for longer than a few minutes, not with finals around the corner, but he can’t seem to get comfortable in his chair. While poor poli-sci major Kiley reads through her final paper on the “political implications of genetic engineering” he slaps a smile on his face and fidgets under the table. Luckily, she’s so terrified of her own prose that she doesn’t notice a thing.

By the second hour, Kurt starts scrawling snarky comments in his notes (“Oh for goodness sake,” “GOD STOP TALKING,” and “Have you even heard of a topic sentence?”) to keep himself from either drumming his fingers on the desk or, worse yet, saying what’s he’s thinking out loud. Somewhere under his nervy irritation, he knows that Kiley didn’t deserve the snark and neither does his second student, Xiaoyu, but he can’t shake the feeling that the office is closing in around his ears.

Claustrophobia isn’t usually a problem that Kurt has to deal with –-thank goodness—otherwise just going into his office would be a traumatic ordeal. The only way he can tell that he hasn’t just had too much coffee is the uncanny sense of deja vu. When he was eight or maybe nine, he was playing hide and seek with his cousins and got himself locked in his parent’s bedroom closet. It was the perfect place to keep Roger and Wesley from finding him; that is, until he tried to peek out the door and it wouldn’t budge. He remembers shoving and rattling the door with every single one of his 60 pounds until he was out of breath, feeling like his favorite blue button-up was suddenly too tight. Pant legs and denim dresses brushed against his face like bats in the darkness and by the time his cousins found him he was so scared he couldn’t speak.

He isn’t scared now, not exactly, but he recalls that sense of being crushed by tiny degrees. It feels like someone flipped that same switch, the switch that takes safe, friendly places and turns them into cozy torture chambers. The walls of his cubical seem to be inching forward into his personal space and, this time, no one’s coming to save him.

When Xiaoyu finally leaves, Kurt makes for the supply shelf. He needs more scratch paper and pencils, but more importantly, he needs something to do with his hands. Without something to play with, he’s worried he’ll start shredding the MLA style guides.

He’s in no mood to inflict himself on his colleagues, so he keeps his eyes averted as he makes his way past the few bodies milling in the reception area. Unfortunately, he walks right into the back of a loud, tall somebody blocking his path to the extra pencils.

“Are all the students extra shitty during finals,” he hears, “or am I just lucky?”

Otto. Naturally. Kurt looks up to see her chattering away with one of the receptionists and leaning casually against the front desk like there’s no one standing right behind her _waiting to get through_. Usually, he would move an obstacle to the side—gently—but Otto isn’t big on physical contact and she’s bigger than he is. She’s been working on some version of her dissertation since George W. Bush’s second inauguration and shows no sign of giving up the ghost. On most days, she’s Kurt’s kind of asshole, like Santana if she’d been a butch German national in her thirties.

“But seriously, Lydia, who do I have to screw to get something that isn’t due at midnight tonight? I’m breaking out from the second-hand stress.” Otto frames her own face in mock delicacy and Kurt gives an indelicate snort.

“I can’t help you with the first part, Otto, but I can recommend excellent skin care products if I could have a minute with that shelf.” Kurt squeezes past on her right and catches her eye roll as he turns towards the cartons of unsharpened pencils.

“Oh boo boo. Having a tough week? Don’t worry your pretty little head. He’ll be back.”

Kurt freezes, ice running through his veins and up into his head. She didn’t say that or she didn’t mean anything by it. _He_ could be anyone.

“I bet he’s somewhere missing his favorite Writing Center tutor as we speak, drawing little hearts and “Blaine loves Kurt” on his notebook paper.” Kurt hears rather than sees her turn and laugh with the receptionist. “You weren’t here for the entire sordid saga, but it was beautiful.” Kurt hears the receptionist giggle and stares a hole into a stack of blank folders. He can see ten bright spots where his knuckles have turned white from gripping the edge of the shelf, but she just won’t stop talking—and talking like none of it matters.

“Every week it was something, kid. We’d all be having our normal, boring appointments and they’re yelling across the office, sexual tension whipping around like confetti. Hot. Jessie decided that they were our very own Beatrice and Benedict, but what else do you expect from an Early Modernist?”

Kurt hears other people walking past the front desk, and he should probably check whether he has another appointment at noon, but first he has to remember how to breathe or how to look up from the supply shelf without trying to run out of the room. This is it. This is all of his worst fears about Blaine and the department come to life, only worse. At least in his fantasies he got to actually have an affair. As it is, he gets all of the scandal without doing anything scandalous. If he weren’t shaking in terror, the irony would be hilarious.

“Oh Kurt!” she cries, and god why does she have to turn back to him? “You must be in the middle of the wedding planning right now! My officemate got married last summer and I knew I’d seen that tension headache somewhere before.” Both receptionists are laughing now. Big belly laughs that carry through the whole office. “Are you fighting about the flower arrangements, babe? Trust me, as long as you keep the hydrangeas hydrated, they’re going to look lovely.”

She reaches out one patronizing hand to pat the back of his shoulder and he smacks it away before he can stop himself. “Get your hands off of me.” He spins, the folders clasped to his chest, and watches as her eyes widen in surprise. “Now.” She turns to say something to Lydia, but he’s not letting her get away now.

“I know that you’re hilarious and clearly have some brilliant insights into the mechanics of seducing your students, but you’ve forgotten one key factor, Otto. Your fantasies don’t apply to my life, my career, or my students. And yes, that means Blaine, because unlike you I am not a morally bankrupt old hag with nothing better to do than fabricate a torrid romance out of thin air.”

She’s backing up, confusion written all over her face, but it’s too late to stop now. This explosion has been building for weeks, and all of that fear and anticipation tumbles out like an avalanche.

“I know this is a foreign concept for this department full of horny children, but I’m here to teach. I expect students to be able to trust that I won’t throw myself at them to alleviate my pathetic desire for sexual attention. So, if you don’t mind, I’m going to take my pencils and my fucking scratch paper and go back to my cubical so that I can do my job.”

“Oh . . . Okay.”

Blaine.

Kurt turns, snapping out of his tunnel vision on Otto, and Blaine’s standing in the doorway, stunned, wide-eyed, and backing slowly out the door. “I— I forgot that I need to get something,” he stutters, his eyes locked on Kurt’s face. “— I’ll be right back.” He disappears into the hallway, and Kurt stares into the vacant space where he stood.

“Holy shit, Kurt.” Otto glances around the room and looks as relieved as Kurt that their colleagues have made themselves scarce. You can hear everything over those cubical walls, let alone a tutor meltdown, but at least they’re playing along. For her part, Lydia’s pretending to be immersed in the schedule for next summer.

Otto lowers her voice to what passes for a whisper,  “You— Christ, Kurt. You know they call it peer tutoring for a fucking reason? I mean, Amy and Ruben actually got legit married last summer and they met when he was leading a Writing Center workshop. Shit Kurt . . . did you think anyone would care?”

She looks torn between backing away and reaching out to give him a hug, so he flees before she can make up her mind. He retreats to his cubical and tries to stop his heart from beating out of his chest.

 

_Not ok. Not ok. Not ok. Not ok._

He paces back and forth across the tiny carpet square until he can’t handle the sound of his own steps and then drops to stoop over the desk. His body feels too tight, like the walls already hit his skin and just kept moving inward, squeezing his lungs until he can’t take in air. There has to be a way out of this and digging a tunnel out of the building is only off the table because he doesn’t have the proper instruments.

The humiliation alone is enough to make him want to curl up under the desk. _How long was Blaine standing there, listening? What if he wants to know what the hell Kurt was talking about? Or, worse yet, what if he just doesn’t come back?_

That thought’s cut off by a quiet cough behind his back. Blaine’s standing at the entrance to his cubical, on the dividing line between his space and the rest of the world. He rocks on the balls of his feet, hands in his pockets, and raises his eyebrow in an unspoken question.

“It’s been a while.”

Kurt bites his lip and nods, still leaning against the desk. He feels his stomach clench as Blaine pulls his hands out of his pockets and stands up straight, like a talk-show host walking on stage.

“I don’t know how much we can cover in 30 minutes,” Blaine says, slowly, “but I was hoping to go over the changes my committee suggested before I submit on Thursday, if that’s okay with you?”

“That- that sounds like a great idea.” Kurt knows that his smile is shaking, but he almost manages to sound normal. If Blaine wants to act as though absolutely nothing happened, then that’s exactly what he’s going to do.

He pulls out a chair for Blaine and then drops into his own. “How are you feeling?” Blaine’s eyes narrow and it occurs to him that that question could be too vague for the situation. “You were sick?”

“Yes . . . last week. It was disgusting. Be very, very glad I didn’t inflict myself on you. There was snot everywhere and I couldn’t work for days. Actually, that was the good part, but—“ He breaks off with a laugh and Kurt feels himself smiling.

“Oh ho. The truth comes out. All this time I thought you were a diligent student, but Blaine Anderson is actually a secret slacker.”

“You got me, officer.” He raises his hands for cuffs and Kurt tells his brain to shut up. “It was all a ruse. I secretly spend my time playing 2048 and doing something with farms.”

“Excuse me? What are you doing on a farm?”

“I have no idea,” Blaine shrugs and reaches down to pull a folder out of his backpack. “I’ve never actually played the game. My brother just keeps trying to invite me to play Farmville on Facebook and I keep telling him to stop friending our parents.”

Kurt giggles down at the table and it feels like he’s taking in his first real breath of air since he got into work today. If he’s honest with himself, it might be the first real breath he’s taken in weeks.

“So,” he sits up his chair and leans in. “What’s left on this thesis that we haven’t already talked to death?”

The answer is apparently absolutely nothing, but they talk it over anyway, crossing Ts and dotting Is until Kurt’s dizzy with theater theory he hasn’t thought about in weeks. It’s a good dizzy, a safe intellectual spin that feels like the work he knows, but that other kind of dizziness is there too. Each time they touch shoulders over Blaine’s draft, he has to consciously tell himself not to swoon like a schoolboy.

They’re wrapping up what has turned into a productive bitch session about Blaine’s advisor, when he suddenly cocks his head and gives his tutor a considered glance. Kurt feels like one of the crown jewels being appraised before an expensive auction. It’s not unpleasant exactly, but he’s not sure what the jewels are supposed to do during the process.

“You know,” Blaine says, jumping out of his reverie. “I never told you, but I didn’t get the internship you helped me apply for.”

“Oh no!” Kurt grabs his hand without thinking. “When did you find out? And why didn’t you email me? I could have sent a consolation emoji.”

Blaine laughs and swats away his concern, but not his hand. “It was a couple weeks ago, and I didn’t want you blaming yourself when I clearly just wasn’t the best candidate.”

“As your tutor, I can’t in good conscience agree about your abilities as a candidate, but I know your application was gorgeous. It couldn’t have been a better fit if you’d included one-hundred dollar bills in the liability waver. . . You didn’t, did you?”

“No, although Cooper, my brother, certainly tried. I guess I just wasn’t what they were looking for,” he demurs, “but there is a silver lining.” Blaine pauses, staring pointedly until Kurt rolls his eyes.

“Are you waiting for a drum roll? Get on with it.”

“Party pooper.” He shoves Kurt’s hand away and crosses his arms in a pout.

“Drama queen.”

“Nice to see that you’ve missed me,” Blaine smirks and Kurt sticks his tongue out in return. “The silver lining is that my rejection freed me up accept a Children’s Theater Internship with the Ivoryton Playhouse next year.”

Kurt squeaks. “Blaine! That— that’s actually perfect for you. Kids and theater? It doesn’t pay, does it?”

“Noooo! No. No. No, but it means I don’t have to look very far for a new apartment or pick up and leave all of my friends or. . . anything else.” Blaine trails off, eyes away from Kurt’s face and back on his paper.

“It—it can be really hard starting over,” Kurt says, softly, “so I’m glad you don’t have to make a new life in Minneapolis, or wherever that other internship would have been.”

Blaine looks up from the desk, the appraisal back in his eyes, “And what if I’d needed writing help in a whole new city, what would I have done? I wouldn’t even know who to call. All my modifiers would be left dangling.”

“Whom,” Kurt smiles, “and thank for making me feel like the Ghostbusters. I didn’t think that was possible. Who you gonna call? Kurt Hummel.”

“That should be your new calling card. You are invaluable.”

Kurt has to pause at the unfiltered honesty in Blaine’s eyes. If he didn’t know any better he would think, _this boy knows me and in his eyes I am gold._ If his eyes could be that honest, he doesn’t know what they’d say and right now he’s not ready to find out.

“And that, my friend, is why I like you. You’re incredibly smart.” Kurt rolls his scrap paper into a little tube and raises it aloft like a scepter. “Blaine Anderson, I hereby declare you prepared to break away from the confines of the ivory tower. Be gone, and go do whatever it is they’re going to make you do for long hours and no pay.”

Blaine barely manages to keep a straight face. “Aww. Thank you very much, Mr. Hummel, I couldn’t have done it without your tireless assistance.” Kurt stands to wish him luck, but Blaine’s already grabbing an evaluation form from the table and heading out the door. He waves over his shoulder as he disappears into the reception area, and Kurt sits back down with a heavy thud.

He’s proud of himself. Really. After that display with Otto, he’s lucky Blaine didn’t disappear into the ether and swear off all contact with crazy people wielding pencils.

Still, Blaine gives really good hugs.

That’s probably why, when Blaine gets to the front desk, Kurt lets himself slip out of his seat and linger near the cubical entryway to watch. He’s going to miss this, and not just because of the stunning view when Blaine leans over the receptionists’ desk. He could sneak closer to listen, but it’s remarkable how well sound travels in the office, particularly when Blaine isn’t even trying to use his inside voice.

“Yes ma’am,” Blaine grins, charm on full blast. “I am going to miss your company every Friday, but sadly I won’t be back.”

Lydia’s softer voice sounds like the muffled adults from Peanuts cartoons, but her laughter carries.

“These are for the team,” Blaine says, producing a box of chocolates from his bag. “In return, could you do me one last favor? Could you check and make absolutely sure that I don’t have any other appointments on the books? I wouldn’t want to mess up the schedule.”

Kurt can’t make out distinct words as the receptionists gush over the candy, reading the list of options out loud and showing them off to the undergrads arriving for their next appointments. They look so happy that, for a minute, Kurt almost feels it too.

Blaine almost has to yell over their gratitude. “Am I officially done with the Writing Center?” he asks.

“That’s right!” Lydia calls back. “You are officially on your own, mister.”

“I think I can deal with that.”

He sounds so. . . thankful, thankful to be done with college, thankful to be done with the Writing Center, and, Kurt can’t help thinking, thankful to be done with him. Of course, Blaine’s ready to leave all of this behind, and he steels himself to watch him go.

But Blaine doesn’t walk out the front door. He turns back to where Kurt’s standing, poorly hidden by the cubical wall, and makes eye contact from across the room. Kurt doesn’t know where his silly, sweet, musical theater-loving friend has gone off to, but he is gone, replaced by a gaze of intensity and rock-solid resolution. Before he can question the shift, Blaine walks towards him, his eyes never leaving Kurt’s face, sets one hand on the wall by his shoulder, and leans in to press their lips together.

The kiss is soft but sure. It’s not a question; it’s a statement. Kurt gasps at the contact, his lips opening of their own volition and Blaine pulls back, flustered and shaken.

“Oh my god, I shouldn’t have done that.” His hand is still by Kurt’s shoulder, as his words speed up in shock and panic. “Not, I mean, that I shouldn’t have kissed you. That was— that was great, but I should have asked first. I’m not some kind of Neanderthal— Me like man. Me take man— I’m not like that! But, she said I absolutely wasn’t your student anymore and it seemed like a good idea at the time—"

“Blaine.” He finally looks back up at Kurt’s face, ready to bolt.

“Yeah?”

“Me like man, too.” Kurt feels the blush spread down his neck, but right now he couldn’t care less. Blaine’s eyes light up in surprise and then delight when Kurt grabs a handful of his cardigan and pulls him back in for a kiss that’s less of a statement and more of an exclamation. His hand reaches for the back of Blaine’s head and he holds them close, one hand still trapped between their bodies as Blaine presses up into their moving mouths.

It’s nothing like the fantasy, because it’s so much better. How can a fantasy capture the soft skin behind Blaine’s neck, the contented humming sound that he makes when Kurt tugs on his shirt, or the audible crack that comes from the cubical wall when they apparently put a little too much pressure on its hinges.

They both start like guilty children, and that’s when Kurt notices the clapping.

If the office was polite about ignoring his earlier moment of insanity, they’ve given up on their generosity. Everyone is out of their little offices and actively cheering them on. At the moment, Kurt would like to ignore them all; just a moment ago there were much more important things happening with his face and, more importantly, with Blaine’s face, but the rest of the office doesn’t seem to be going away. In fact, they’re getting louder.

“Yeah, Hummel!” Nathan leans over the neighboring cubical and punches him in the shoulder. “Should I call Elliott, or would you like to do the honors?”

The receptionists seem to have started up a group cheer that’s mostly obscene, and Early-Modernist Jessie keeps shouting something about “stopping his mouth with a kiss.”

Blaine ducks his head into Kurt’s chest, as they both giggle at the ground. “You work with dorks.”

“Says the man who collects signed first-run playbills.”

“They’re my kind of dorks.”

Kurt knows that his smile looks ridiculous, big, toothy, and shameless, but he can’t help it. “You’ve got my e-mail?”

“Of course.”

“Could you just—?”

“I will.” Blaine squeezes his hand and grins back like he’s won the lottery. The crowd catcalls as he leaves and he waves back, blowing kisses to every one of the receptionists. Kurt just kissed his very own Miss America.

“Okay children,” a voice calls from the computer lab. _Oh god. His boss is here. How did he miss that?_ Actually, he has a pretty good idea of how he missed that, but he doesn’t want to think about all of the kissing with her in his line of sight. “This has been an excellent show. Thank you for that, but you only have 25 minutes left in your appointments and, contrary to popular opinion, we aren’t actually running a dating service. Get back to work, ladies and gentlemen. Kurt.” She nods at him from the doorway and he could swear that his sixty-year-old coordinator just winked at him.

The crowd starts to disperse back to the regular grind and Kurt wanders back to his cube. Even with the muttered conversations on all sides, the space is quiet. This has always been his own little corner and his own little chair, but for once it doesn’t feel like his peace ends at his cubical walls. When he goes home, there will be an email and, later perhaps, a call. Then, Blaine might come over or they could go out to get coffee or see the student production of RENT.

Even now, the possibilities multiply like stars in a darkening sky, but every one of those possibilities feels like _home_. Until this semester, this little office had always been the place where he knew himself best, but for the first time _home_ doesn’t just feel like a patch of carpet and a beat-up old desk. It feels like a toothy smile, and an open gaze, and like a young man who sees him in all of his stupidity and still thinks _you are gold._

“Kurt,” Lydia calls from the front desk, “your 1 o’clock appointment is here.”

“Okay,” he calls back. “I’m ready.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who sent or posted encouragement during the creation of this little story. This is all for you, you wonderful human beings!

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Glee Write What You Know Fest on tumblr at http://gleewritewhatyouknow.tumblr.com/


End file.
